When I started this book, I expected it to be a fun exercise in learning and it has been. I am enjoying it immensely. My brain has been thinking new thoughts and traveling down new pathways. As I have read this most recent chapter on morality from The God Delusion and reflected on the entire book up to this point, I have decided that your theology is critical. His stated goal is to convert people to atheism and without a strong biblical theology, I believe this book would convert many people I know. I dare say that if I was not saved by grace and grace alone, I would have been converted in chapter two or three.
In this section of the book, he discusses the question – if there is no God, why be good?
If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would ‘commit robbery, rape, and murder’, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, ‘and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you’. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.
If the good in us comes from God in the form of common grace, a grace God gives all of mankind, then the claim that God is necessary for us to be good is not undermined. I know that I am totally depraved and unable to do good without the grace of God. When God removes His grace, I fall and I fall hard.
This knowledge makes me all the more thankful for God and His grace. It makes me want to worship Him, serve and love His people, and pray for those who do not know the amazing saving grace that He can bestow. Our God is an awesome God who reigns from heaven above…